


It's Hard to Tell the Difference, Sometimes

by FoiblePNoteworthy



Series: The Non-Existent Twin [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, and everyone he knows is a liar, but then he has to pretend to be nice and it confuses himm, like a little bit tho like idk, set during seige of the north, this was meant to be funny but now it has a story ugh, when we also assume he loves theatre, why does everyone assume hes a bad liar, zuko pretends to be his own twin and it works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoiblePNoteworthy/pseuds/FoiblePNoteworthy
Summary: On the nights after battles, too keyed up to sleep, Aang had taken to walking around, exploring whichever area he happened to be in. More often than not, he would find Li doing the same, and the two would spend the night somewhere far from camp where the others couldn’t see and find out about him, just letting everything out.***Or: Zuko convinces the GAng he's his own twin brother Part 2 - In which he is absolutely not friends with Aang, and doesn't wish he could be Li right now so he could talk to him.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: The Non-Existent Twin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1573438
Comments: 63
Kudos: 1488





	It's Hard to Tell the Difference, Sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> Just to clarify: This story is set during the Seige of the North; This is not an AU where Zuko actually has a twin brother; This was originally meant to be a joke but I don't know how to not write emotions; I'm sorry

Aang returned to his body in a flash of light. He was startled to find his hands and feet bound, forcing him to lay on the floor.

“Welcome back,” said the boy sitting across from him. With his hair covered by white cloth to hide him in the snow, and his expression hardened by bruises and scrapes, there was no way of knowing whether he was Zuko or Li.

Considering the circumstances, one was more likely than the other. But a kid could hope.

“Which twin are you?” he asked, already sure of the answer, “I’m sorry, I just don’t know the difference when you’re dressed like that. Yet,” he added, as if they would become distinct somehow, when they were identical down to the _scar_.

“Li,” Li said, trying and failing to smile, sending a little rush of relief down Aang’s spine.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You already said that.” His voice was rough, as was his demeanour. He must have had a difficult day.

“I don’t know that I was entirely sincere the first time,” at Li’s raised eyebrow (or maybe it was supposed to be eyebrow ** _s_** , but he couldn’t tell) he explained, “If you had been Zuko, I would have called the confusion a compliment.”

Li laughed, his smile tearing his scabbed split lip open. He winced, hand coming up to his face.

“Bad day?”

He sighed. “Yeah. My, uh, house was blown up a few days ago.”

“Ouch.”

“While I was in it.”

“Double ouch.”

They sat in awkward silence for a minute, Aang not wanting to think too much about his friend’s house being blown up and him probably almost dying and also what why was he at the North Pole anyway, how did he get here?

He’d barely seen him since the rescue, mostly just glimpses here and there, him showing up to help him against Zhao (but never Zuko, and he didn’t want to think too hard about that) and disappearing the moment he was safe. Aang, that is. (Li had precious little regard for his own wellbeing.)

There had, however, been a few nights when he’d just shown up to talk to him.

On the nights after battles, too keyed up to sleep, Aang had taken to walking around, exploring whichever area he happened to be in. More often than not, he would find Li doing the same (had he been watching over them on those nights?), and the two would spend the night somewhere far from camp where the others couldn’t see and find out about him, just letting everything out.

Aang would talk about how different everything is, how he missed his home and his people and culture; Li would commiserate in a way that only a banished man could. Home seemed so close to both of them, in different ways, but so unattainable. They had to live with what they had.

(They both knew it wasn’t enough, wouldn’t be for too many years.)

Li would talk about the Fire Nation, his people and home; about his brother, and the love they used to share. His confusion over the war, his bone-deep certainty that there must be _something_ good about it, even as he found it harder to justify it as time went on.

More than once, those discussions had ended in a fight, sometimes even a physical one. After those nights, Aang never saw him until he next needed his help (but he was always there for him, even when he was furious and confused and sad; even when they’d been fighting the night before).

Despite their growing closeness, Aang saw Li little and far between, with weeks between their meetings at times. Sometimes, Aang could only sit and watch the bounty on his wanted posters grow higher and higher as he did whatever it was that he did when he wasn’t helping Aang. He’d been worried, but as long as those posters were still about that meant he was still free, right?

For the here and now he knew that Li was safe, and he could focus his attention elsewhere. For example, “Li? Why am I tied up?”

Li refused to meet his eye. “You kept moving around while in your trance or whatever. I was worried I’d drop you in a snowdrift.”

“Okay… So why are we here right now?”

“The Oasis was attacked. I had to get you somewhere safe.”

 _The Siege! How did he forget_? He had to go back and help.

“…This was the best I could do with the time I had.” Li continued as if the fact that the Siege had made its way to the centre of the city – _where his friends were_ \- wasn’t _incredibly_ important.

“Okay, that’s great, could you let me go now – I need to get back there.” Aang wriggled to pull himself up, glancing at his friend, who gave him a… less than friendly look. “Li, come on, I’ve gotta go.”

“You can’t… I-”

“Li!” Aang started to struggle in earnest. His friend wasn’t going to help him. Why? “I need to get back to the battle!”

“You can’t!” Li shouted, turning to face him full-on, “You,” he seemed to struggle for words, “It’s not safe.”

His hands twitched as though reaching for a weapon, dropping sparks, and Aang realised his swords were missing.

He never went _anywhere_ without those swords. Because he didn’t like to _firebend_.

Something was very, _very,_ wrong.

“Li,” he pleaded, trying to push down that horrible thought, “Li, please untie me and let me go help my friends.”

Li looked at him but didn’t answer, puffs of flame coming out with every breath as he struggled with his temper and the cold. His face, underlit by the fire, twisted in anger (why was he so _angry_ , what did Aang _do?_ ), looked less like Li and more like-

_No._

Aang gasped, wrestling with the disappointment and the embarrassment (of course this wasn’t _Li_ , how could he be so _stupid_ ) and the ropes binding him past the point of discomfort. It was pointless. “You’re not… you’re Zuko! You lied to me!”

 ~~Li~~ Zuko smirked at him; all traces of kindness gone from his face. “It was worth a shot.”

“Where’s Li? What have you done to him?”

An unreadable expression crossed Zuko’s face, twitching his eyebrow and one corner of his mouth. Had he been Li, Aang could have called it a smile. “Li,” he said, a slight quaver in his voice that had to be a laugh.

(And Aang _hated_ seeing the resemblance between them, seeing Li in Zuko’s face in the rare moments when he almost seemed like a _person,_ with his joyful smiles and gentle laugh twisted into something darker).

“What on earth would _Li_ ,” he continued, his voice dripping scorn, “be doing at the North Pole? How would he get here?”

And he was laughing. Hand over his mouth, deep from his stomach, eyes half-shut (same as Li did), he chuckled at the thought that his brother would find a way to help Aang when he needed him, as if he hadn’t so many times before.

“I’m sure he’d find a way, if he wanted to,” Aang said, hoping to cut off the disturbing resemblance. Wanting to pretend to himself that Li could be here, could help him, could be on his way right now along with everyone else.

The chuckles petered out somewhat, but didn’t stop completely. “I’m sure he could,” Zuko agreed, almost acting _pleasant_ , “He’s very resourceful, my brother.”

He looked up at Aang, caught his eye, and time froze for a moment. “But he won’t be here to help you.”

A bolt of fear shot through Aang. “What did you do to him?” Was he injured? Captured? _~~(Dead?)~~_

His brother’s potential mortal peril didn’t seem to phase Zuko. His good mood persevered, his mouth stuck in a curved little grin. “Li’s fine. He’s _my_ brother, in case you’d forgotten. He can look after himself.”

“Then where is he?” He knew that Zuko was just feeding him breadcrumbs to make him squirm, knew he could just be making things up – he was a liar, he pretended to be Li, nothing he said could be trusted – but he was terrified for his friend. If there was one person who could get under Li’s skin, it was Zuko.

No one could hurt him more than his brother.

(Li had told him, one night, that Zuko had set fire to his favourite turtleduck pond a few days after half of their family had disappeared overnight (Li refused to see it as anything other than a coincidence), trying to understand the feeling of grief by watching death and upset in real time, in his little brother’s eyes.

Li had forgiven him, eventually, but only when he’d understood why. He pitied Zuko, for the pressure that had been put on him as a child, forcing him to be someone he hadn’t wanted to be. He couldn’t accept the idea that Zuko just _was_ this way, that he couldn’t be redeemed, that it was time to let go.

Li cared about Zuko, and every terrible thing Zuko did only made Li care about him more. And it was increasingly likely that Zuko was well aware of that.)

***

Zuko knew he should feel bad. Really. This was a horrible thing to do to someone. Aang was probably really upset.

But at the same time.

It was really fucking funny. And really fucking fun.

He understood _entirely_ why his mother had been an actress.

Everything was so far past ridiculous - he’d started hamming it up for both personas, making sure that they were both completely separate from each other in personality.

Zuko was now a cackling smirking evil megalomaniac, like something out of the plays his mother used to take him to see. He’d always thought that playing the villain looked like fun. It was more than a little silly, he had to do admit – and he could have gone without his new reputation with everyone else - but he was now entirely distinct from Li.

(It just got better when he got the crew in on it. They were surprisingly interested in pretending to be evil in the name of the Fire Nation.)

Li was far more rewarding _(with every inch of trust he stole, he was only getting closer),_ but much more difficult to play. He had to seem sincere, like a real person, and as such had to have _feelings_. And reasons to have those feelings. He had to talk to Aang about real things, about personal things that made him seem sympathetic. He wasn’t particularly practised in that.

More often than not, when talking about ‘Zuko’ he had to think about Azula just to get ideas (he was an actor, not a playwright), and that meant he had to deal with the memories he’d brought to the forefront after years of ignoring them.

(They had been happy for some time. They hadn’t been for a lot longer.)

Far worse than thinking about Azula - he also had to talk about the war, and explain why he was a ~~traitor~~ sympathiser. He didn’t enjoy analysing exactly what was going on, didn’t like how easily his morals and defences were chipped down by the Avatar’s arguments. Sometimes he’d lose his temper. Even then, the boy hadn’t cared about what he’d said (or done), only that he’d been upset. That he hadn’t seen him for a while, while he sulked.

(Whenever he saw him as ‘Zuko’ after those nights when they got too serious, he made sure to be a little bit extra evil. He wasn’t entirely sure why it was so important to him to be explicitly Fire Nation, to express the anger he couldn’t risk letting out as Li, but it always made him feel a little bit better.)

It was easier to talk about ‘Zuko’ as his protective older brother, back when they’d been really little, back when he really had cared. He thought about Lu Ten, and the stories (and emotion) he needed came all too easily.

But regardless, both roles had their upsides and their downsides. However, their different applications really came in handy, even today – too exhausted to keep up his Li persona well ( _why did he even try it when he had him tied up? Why did the boy_ believe _he was Li when he had him tied up_?), he’d lost his temper and failed to come up with a decent explanation for his very Zuko-ish actions in time. Despite the way he’d been acting, instead of realising the ruse, he had simply… _deduced_ … that it was Zuko and not Li who was with him.

(He had to rapidly switch from _~~being genuine and talking to his friend~~_ faking being nice to _~~acting out in disappointment~~_ faking being the evilest evil.)

The thought that there was no Li, and that the Zuko he knew wasn’t real, hadn’t even crossed Aang’s mind. He trusted Li too much.

“Then where is he?” The Avatar was shouting, terrified for Li. Worried about what Zuko may or may not have done to his brother.

(Was he a bad person for finding this so funny? Probably. Would that make him stop pushing the boy’s buttons? No. He’d had a rough day _~~(and he couldn’t talk to his only friend about it because he had to be~~_ ~~evil _)_~~ , he’d earned this.)

“Oh, I couldn’t say,” he pulled a blade out of his pocket to pretend to polish it. The blade was already perfectly polished, and he had no use for it at the moment. “Tell me, how long has it been since you saw him?”

“Where. Is. He?”

Zuko gave a little internal sigh. The boy was just asking the same question over and over. That was no fun. Time for a change in tactics.

“Answer my question first, and I’ll think about telling you what I know.” He gave him a little sideways glance, wondering what he’d pick up on in that. He could never spot when Li was lying or tricking him (which was _always_ (…often (…when he _had to_ ))), but he was on the lookout with Zuko.

How deep had he gone with this, that the boy would easily have been able to spot what he was up to had he had just a little less trust in Li?

“He…” the boy looked down in thought. “I haven’t seen him since…” The Avatar gasped, then looked back up at him with a little triumphant smirk. “You don’t know where he is either! You're trying to get me to tell you!”

“Well, yes,” Zuko pulled on his smuggest smirk (pushing away the feelings of _Li,_ which had lingered too long anyway), feeling the satisfying power of the ham flow through him. How did this kid not see it? “That is how questions work. I’d already told you I don’t know where he is.”

Aang grinned. “He’ll be right on his way then! There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

Zuko laughed as long as he felt he could get away with before it would seem a little weird. (Admittedly, he wasn’t quite sure that he hadn’t gone overboard anyway.) “You little fool,” he sneered, “And here I thought my brother might have mentioned me.”

Aang’s expression became a little more closed off as he considered exactly what he had been told about the evil but once caring brother (who had burned his turtleduck pond to watch him cry and stayed up all night teaching him all the pretty tricks he could do with what little fire he had).

“He has,” he ventured, not offering Zuko any more information.

Zuko raised his eyebrow at him, letting his smirk widen the slightest amount. “He’s not going to fight against me,” he told him. It was one of the few occasions he had told the Avatar the entire truth. “He’s afraid of me. He knows he’ll never beat me, knows I’m the stronger fighter.”

That was less true; even within his own interpretation of Li’s character (which, despite being something _he_ had created, had to be second to the Avatar’s interpretation), he was certain that Li was less _afraid_ to _fight_ against Zuko, and more _unhappy_ with the _choices_ he had made, not wanting to see him as he was currently, instead of as who he had been in Li’s memory – not to mention that he doesn’t want to fight against someone he loves, doesn’t want to hurt him, despite everything he had done.

He was careful to not think about Azula.

_~~(Sometimes he wondered which persona was the real one.)~~ _

The point was, even though as Zuko he claimed that Li didn’t fight against him because he was afraid, he hoped that Aang would instead think that Li didn’t fight him because he loved him.

Not that the illusion of Li should matter anymore, seeing as he had the Avatar, and could soon go home and tell him what a fool he’d been to believe him _~~(and watch his face fall as he realised his friend had betrayed him)~~_. ~~~~

Aang didn’t say anything in response, and, as much as he was curious about what he thought of his latest performance, he knew better than to prod at it, and so they sat in silence.

Until the Bison showed up, at least.

***

Surrounded by snow, it hadn’t exactly been difficult for Katara to take out Zuko and free Aang.

The boy was silent throughout the whole affair, barely reacting to anything until they were seconds away from leaving, and he watched the unconscious teen shivering in the snow.

If they left him here, he would die. He wouldn’t have to be afraid of him anymore. No more flinching at Li’s face, no more being followed across countries, ambushed in places they thought were safe. He would be safe. His friends would be safe.

Li would be free – he would be unafraid of his brother, he could properly mourn and move past the boy who stole bread from the kitchens so they could feed turtleducks together even though he didn’t care for them, who learned stealth with him by dodging their sister and father, who convinced their father to let him learn sword-fighting, and comforted him when his flame was too weak and when he was afraid of scary theatre scrolls and-

Li loved Zuko. With everything he had.

Zuko had, once, protected Li. Maybe he still would, and pretended otherwise – Aang had, after all, never seen them interact.

Li would be devastated if his brother died – and would never forgive Aang for letting it happen, never mind that he’d done it for Li’s own good, that he’d never been anything but a terrible person to him, that it was far safer for everyone involved if Zuko just stayed here.

Just stayed here, and died, and never got a chance to be the person he had been before he’d been forced to be this, never even realised _why_ he had to change, that what he was doing was _wrong_ – and Aang knew he _wanted_ to be a good person; Li had said so often enough, had promised that Zuko would come around _one day._

Would that day ever come?

Not if he died today.

Aang leapt off Appa and retrieved the Prince’s limp body. He had to risk this. For Li.

(And maybe, just _maybe_ , for Zuko, too.)

**Author's Note:**

> comment/kudos/etc please and thank you  
> subscribe to the series for more, cus multi-chap fics make me nervous (im scared of commitment) and i like to call things finished even when they're not  
> next chapter should be up in a week-ish
> 
> if yall have anything you think i should write within this 'verse let me know and I'll try to do it or work something similar in - especially if you have any ideas related to them in ba sing se (boost my brain, people!)  
> also, ive been considering a bonus one between this chapter and the last one just about them meeting up and talking and fighting together and stuff. anything you can think about in that vein would be appreciated because i do not know what im doing and even though all i write is emotions they're heckin' hard alright? hlep
> 
> on the plus side, at least exams are done for now and ill have more time for writing


End file.
